Cutting the Cord and Ditching the Dish Can Save You Money

WAUKEE, Iowa -- More and more people are choosing to cut the cord and get rid of cable television and only subscribe to streaming services. One local family weighed the pros and cons of several streaming services and wanted to share their research.

“We recently had our fifth child and so with a big family, it’s really important to scale back and figure out where your money’s going and make the best options,” Waukee resident Amie Schnoor said.

When it comes to streaming services, there are hundreds of options, but they narrowed it down to four; HuluPlus, YouTube TV, DirecTV Now and Sling.

“Then my husband, his love language is spread sheets, he was able to pull all the information off the internet,” Schnoor said.

The spread sheet showed the monthly price, how many devices it could run at the same time, and how many hours of DVR.

“Then he punched in the kids' and our favorite channels and then we ended up on Hulu Plus, met the most of our needs,” Schnoor said. “We weren’t sad to see cable go at all.”

Especially because their cable bill was increasing from $80 to $125 a month.

“That’s ridiculous, because you’re not even using, like 100 of the channels we don’t even use,” Schnoor said.

Cutting the cord has made the Schnoors feel less cluttered.

“We’re down to one remote, that makes my heart very happy, and when I push the button to turn on the TV, it just pops up with a really clean screen, just like on an iPad, you’ve got all your apps all lines up and its really easy to navigate,” Scnhoor said.

There are hundreds of streaming services out there and they all cost around $40. The differences are the live TV options or the recordable hours. The Schnoors only chose to look at four of the options but you can use their spreadsheet as a guideline for yourself if you are interested in cutting the cord.